First Aussies took south route

Genetic research indicates that Australian Aboriginals initially arrived via south Asia

First Aussies took south route

http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20092307-19458.html

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/9/173/abstract

Nanoparticles Image Breast Cancer

A new report suggests that targeted iron oxide nanoparticles could serve as novel imaging agents for the early detection of breast tumors and overcome current limitations including low sensitivity and resolution.

Nanoparticles Image Breast Cancer

PhysOrg.com http://www.physorg.com/news167412130.html

Is the cloning of whole animals (including humans) desirable?

Is the cloning of whole animals (including humans) desirable?

Second assignment for St Aidan’s Anglican Girl’s School

This blog is a combination of a previous post and one of the GNTIS Ethical Questions, plus some new stuff relevant to animals.

(A little disclaimer here: My views are not necessarily those of the GNTIS)

US fertility expert Panayiotis Zavos a few months ago claimed (yet again) to have implanted cloned embryos into women in an attempt to produce a cloned child.

There was loads of chatter about this on news sites and blogs worldwide. But we have been here before – kooks to con artists claiming that they have cloned a human being only to be revealed as charlatans. But Zavos is trying it for real, as far as we can tell, albeit unsuccessfully, so far.

At the moment there appears an overwhelming public abhorrence to human reproductive cloning. But one thing that has been shown in nearly all cloning stories is that there appears to be a good supply of people willing to have themselves or, in the case of one couple, their deceased child cloned. People are lining up to be implanted, despite the high risk.

Why do all these women or couples want to have a cloned child? The article in The Independent suggests the mother wanting to clone her deceased child wanted desperately to replace her child. (I assume she was counselled that the cloned child would be a completely different person and likely even look a bit different because of different womb conditions. What about other clone-obsessed people? Do they see it as simply an extension of IVF? Is it morbid curiosity, fame/celebrity status they seek?

There is no real technical reason why we can’t clone humans. We have done it we other mammals and there are only relatively minor technical obstacles to overcome to achieve it in humans. It will just take time and a lot of money.

So is there anything wrong with cloning a human being. We do it with animals on a regular basis, why not humans as well?

Society has accepted IVF and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis which allows us to create and select out embryos free of genetic diseases/disorders. In some countries you can select the sex of your child and potentially in the future other appealing characteristics. Some proponents argue reproductive cloning it is just an extension of these assisted reproductive techniques.

We accept identical twins, which are effectively clones.

OK, I personally don’t think we should or need to clone humans, but who am I to dictate what a person can or can’t do assuming they aren’t harming anyone else and they are consenting adults who have been fully informed about the process.

Issues??

Based on comments in news stories, editorials and blog postings some of the rejection of human cloning is because of the technical difficulties in creating a healthy clone. At the moment, even in animals, it can take the creation of hundreds of embryos to get one clone born healthy. The others die at various stages or soon after birth because of deformities and other complications.

But what if we could perfect the technique and ensure that the chances of producing a healthy human clone were as good as or better than trying to produce a child by natural means?

Would this make cloning acceptable? Why or why not?

Forget the silly and extreme arguments against cloning such as the possibility of creating an army of cloned super warriors or Hitlers. There are loads of more realistic religious, cultural and social reasons why people consider cloning wrong. These include the following:

Destruction of human dignity, loss of individuality

The Universal Declaration on Human Genome and Human Rights (UNESCO 1997) is one of a number of documents that state that reproductive cloning is contrary to human dignity. This is based on a number of considerations. For example, cloning risks turning human beings into manufactured objects and that it could further the attitude that people exist to serve purposes set by other people.

Psychological trauma/harm to the clone.

Knowing you are a clone, a genetic copy of another person could cause psychological harm. How would you feel knowing that you were a clone of your dead brother or sister?

What if someone cloned you without your permission?

For further details see the links below

Given that the technical issues of cloning will doubtless be overcome, though probably not for decades, human reproductive cloning, I suggest, is inevitable. Someone somewhere will do it and there will be a queue of people lining up for their service.

But just because we can (or will) perfect human cloning, should we do it?

If we do, what restrictions do we put on it, if any? Who should or should not be allowed access to reproductive cloning technology? Should everyone be allowed access, that is, equity of access?

A few extra resources

www.biotechnologyonline.gov.au

WHO

http://www.who.int/ethics/topics/cloning/en/

Human Genome Project

http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml

Animals

As mentioned we clone animals routinely nowadays. So why do some of us, at least, think differently about the cloning of animals? There is a lot of lobbying from various groups worldwide to ban the sale of meat from cloned animals and their offspring. What are their reasons for this opposition? Is the meat unsafe? Definitely not as there is no logical or scientific basis to this. The US Food and Drug Administration recently gave the OK for consumption of milk and meat from cloned animals and their offspring – http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/01/15/fda.cloning/

Food Standards Australia New Zealand are monitoring this debate. http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/newsroom/factsheets/factsheets2008/foodderivedfromclone3821.cfm

Besides you are unlikely to eat a cloned animal. If it costs $50,000 to make a cloned animal you are hardly going to sell it for meat within a year of it being born. Such animals are for breeding purposes. Their offspring, however, you may find on your dinner plate.

Here is the view of one company that clones agriculturally important animals

http://www.cloneinternational.com.au/

Do a Google for Matilda, Australia’s first cloned sheep born in 2000 or see the story in the GNTIS “Biotechnology in animals ” publication.

Stuff to get your head around

Yeh, we can clone things. But we need to discuss whether just because we can, should we? And if we should, how should we? That is, this knowledge can be used in many ways for many outcomes. Which ways are acceptable, which are not?

Is there anything wrong with cloning a human being? We do it with animals on a regular basis, why not humans as well?

Is the cloning of animals a separate argument from humans? Obviously, governments of the world are making decisions that suggest this is the case, but what do you think?

What circumstances, if any, would make cloning acceptable? Would perfecting the technique so we could clone humans safely make it acceptable?

If cloning is done, what restrictions do we put on it, if any? Who should or should not be allowed access to reproductive cloning technology? Should everyone be allowed access, that is, equity of access?

Is there really any destruction of human dignity or loss of individuality for a cloned human? That is, they will be there own person with their own values, they will just happen to share the same genes as someone else – just like an identical twin?

What about psychological trauma/harm to the clone? Will human cloning, should it ever become legal and technically feasible, ever become mainstream or common enough to avoid this, if it can be avoided at all?

What about what I call the “Yuk factor”? That is, it just feels wrong, but you can’t articulate why. If you fit this category, have a go at articulating.

There are loads more issues here. This is just to get the discussion started. Feel free to throw your own thoughts into the fray.

Jason

Manager

GNTIS

Pests could overcome GM cotton toxins

Caterpillars reveal a chink in the armour of transgenic crops.

Heidi Ledford

Nature: Published online 6 July 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.629

Laboratory studies suggest that it may be possible for insects to overcome two disparate toxins produced by genetically modified cotton. The results strike a cautionary note at a time when developers are racing to create crops that produce many different pesticides.

Insects can become resistant to individual insecticides in much the same way as bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics. One way to reduce this threat is to adopt a ‘pyramid’ approach and create crops that produce multiple toxins that target the same pest.

“This is the current trend of all the companies,” says Juan Ferré, a geneticist at the University of Valencia in Spain. “They are all combining more than one gene to have better control and to delay resistance.” For example, next year, Monsanto, a US agricultural products company based in St Louis, Missouri, intends to launch a line of maize (corn) that contains eight different genes that make the crop resistant to herbicides and to attack by insects.

“Evolution by insects is not something that scientists are going to stop.”

Bruce Tabashnik
University of Arizona

One of the most common ‘pyramided’ crops on the market is cotton that produces two different ‘Bt’ toxins made naturally by the bacterium Bacillus thuringensis. The two toxic proteins, Cry1Ac and Cry2Ab, have very different amino-acid sequences and bind to different target sites.

As a result, mutations that confer resistance to both toxins were thought to be unlikely, says Bruce Tabashnik, an entomologist at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “The main way that insects become resistant is by altering the binding site of the toxin,” he says. “These two toxins don’t bind to the same site — if the insects altered the Cry1Ac binding site, it’s not going to give cross resistance to Cry2Ab.”

But when Tabashnik and his colleagues tried to selectively breed insects that were resistant to Cry2Ab, they found that that some were also resistant to Cry1Ac. The results are reported this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences¹.

Arms race

The researchers were studying pink bollworm (Pectinophora gossypiella) — a particular nuisance in the cotton fields of the southern United States. Crops expressing Cry1Ac have thus far largely held the pest at bay, and there has been no sign of Cry1Ac resistance emerging in the insects.

Tabashnik wanted to learn more about how insects may become resistant to the less-studied Cry2Ab protein, so the team raised a number of different laboratory strains of pink bollworms on a diet that contained the toxin. To their surprise, they generated a strain of pink bollworm that was not only resistant to 240-times higher levels of Cry2Ab than normal, but also to 420-times higher concentrations of Cry1Ac.

Although the binding sites of the two toxins differ, both toxins are activated via the same pathway in the insect. A change in the protease responsible for activating the toxins could provide an avenue to cross-resistance, Tabashnik says. Other changes in the insect’s ability to cope with damaged cells could also play a part, says Ferré, who was not involved with the study.

The results show that cross-resistance between the two toxins is possible. But “this does not pose a threat for control by the current pyramided Bt cotton of this insect”, Tabashnik says. The resistant pink bollworms were able to withstand high concentrations of both toxins in their diets, but they were not able to survive the higher concentrations of Cry2Ab found on cotton bolls produced by the pyramided transgenic cotton.

Ferré urges caution on extrapolating laboratory results to the field. “This is a special condition in the laboratory,” he says. “The important thing is to find out whether that resistance can be obtained in the field.”

Nevertheless, the results do highlight the continued threat of resistance, adds Tabashnik. “Pyramids are not a panacea,” he says. “Evolution by insects is not something that scientists are going to stop.”

Nanocrystals bring new blue light and help for climate change

Berkeley Lab media release:

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2009/07/21/blue-light-nanocrystals/

Should we clone extinct or endagered animals and plants

St Aidan’s Anglican Girl’s School assignment

Should we clone extinct or endagered animals and plants

First thing students need to do is look at the techniques involved in cloning plants and animals. Plants are easy. Every time you take a cutting from a plant or graft a cutting you are creating a clone. We have been doing this for hundreds of years and nature does without our help, for example when trees send up suckers.

Cloning animals is a different story and there are plenty of complicated ethical considerations to make you think. Are there any ethical considerations for plants? If so, how do they differ, if at all, from animals?

For this blog, I will concentrate on the animal stuff. Note: we have yet to clone an extinct animal, but we have cloned endangered ones. More details below.

Making a clone

Here are some links to help you get your head around how animal cloning is done:

Interactive: Clone a Tassie Tiger

The written version from Human Genome Project

The ethical stuff

You will have realised that cloning is a very inefficient process. That is the success rate is poor, and it is expensive to do, but is that justification for not trying? And if you don’t try how do you advance the technology?

Another issue is that many of the animals that are born are malformed or weakened in some way.

See this New Scientist article about the first success at cloning an extinct species – sort of

Some issues with attempting to clone extinct species

First you need to find intact DNA. Fragments of the genome are no good unless you have enough fragments to piece together the entire genome, and even then it is a task that today’s technology has yet to master as the attempt to clone the Tasmanian Tiger has shown.

Second, you long dead and now extinct animal must have died somewhere to preserve that DNA – eg Siberian permafrost or tinder dry caves. Most DNA, however, does not survive the elements. Even in ideal conditions, a million years is usually the longest DNA will remain intact for, so forget trying to recreate T-Rex

Third you need a close living relative that can be the surrogate mother. It ain’t going to work trying to resurrect a Tasmanian Tiger using a dog – one is a marsupial remember. A Tassie Devil might work, though.

OK so you have cloned your extinct species. What are you going to do with it? What will its future be?

Check this scenario out to get you thinking

And just for interest. How to clone a mammoth

Not dead yet

Cloning an endangered animal is somewhat easier because you have living and intact DNA to work with, so success is more likely. But you still have issues with a lack of genetic diversity and the same ethical issues associated with cloning anything.

The Guar was the first endangered animal cloned – born in 2001 – and there have been a few more since. See this link nscloningnotes for some notes

Why not an animal bank?

We have created numerous seed banks to store the seeds of all sorts of environmentally and agriculturally important plants. Why not do the same for animals. That is store tissue samples from endangered animals. This will at least allow you to ensure genetic diversity down the track. That is, you would make sure the samples you froze were from a wide range of genetically distinct individuals so that if you ever had to using cloning to bring back or save a species from extinction you would have a genetically diverse individuals to eventually breed from. In-breeding is thing to avoid. Think what happens if humans start in-breeding….perish the thought.

See this New Scientist article about success with cloning mice from frozen brain tissue

Let ‘em go extinct.

There is an interesting debate about how much effort and money one should put into saving nearly extinct animals. To attempt to do this can cost millions of dollars and if you are lucky enough to be successful you have a handful of individuals that lack genetic diversity and often without sufficient habitat to put them in. Would we do better to put our scarce money and resources into protecting vulnerable species – ie those that might become endangered or go extinct if we don’t start doing something now? This way you could use the money and people power to save many species instead of just one.

See following articles

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/02/2206113.htm

and a media release I wrote a while ago

Right or wrong

Cost of cloning is too great to justify? Or, what is the cost of extinction and do we have a duty to try and save these animals?

Is the knowledge gained by improving the cloning process worth the effort? What knowledge could be gained?

What would be the future of extinct animal brought back to life through cloning?

Should we distinguish between cloning an extinct species and an endangered one? That is should one have priority over the other or do we attempt to do both – or neither? Why?

When, if ever, would we be justified to attempt to clone and extinct species? What about an endangered one? That is what are the criteria that says this animal should be cloned and that one shouldn’t be?

Should we forget about this altogether and spend money on just saving the vulnerable species?

Is an animal tissue bank a good idea, bearing in mind the cost of setting one up and then maintaining it?

Is cloning going to help the conservation effort – since that is the main purpose for attempting this?

What are your thoughts regarding the above questions. Time to start the discussion. Should we get a discussion going I will see if I can get experts to contribute as well.

Jason Major

GNTIS

Science education: Reading, writing and nanofabrication

This is a recent article from Nature – not sure if it will make science teachers envious, cranky, or just depressed.

Science education: Reading, writing and nanofabrication

With its electron microscope, genetic sequencing machines and observatory, the Yokohama Science Frontier High School is equipped like no other. Will future scientists be inspired there

David Cyranoski

Nature 9 July 2009. 460 pp171-172

The timetable for 15-year-old students at Yokohama Science Frontier High School (YSFH) can be busy. Before break, they might grow single-layer carbon nanotubes in argon gas and evaluate them with micro-Raman spectroscopy. After break, there are polymerase chain reactions (PCR) to be done. Things don’t slow down after class, when students stick around in the observatory to glimpse star clusters or Saturn’s rings from the school observatory. The equipment list at Japan’s first dedicated science high school, which began classes in April, could rival a small research institute.

The school is also a sophisticated experiment. Its main champion, biophysicist and genomics pioneer Akiyoshi Wada, hopes a “flood” of such institutes will open up throughout the country, inspiring students and Japan’s future leaders. Wada thinks that the school is key to reversing children’s waning interest in mathematics and science, a phenomenon that has attracted political hand-wringing and has even been given a name — rika banare.

As one of five ‘super advisers’ to the school, and the only one with a permanent position there, Wada has been instrumental in its creation. He spent most of his four-decade career initiating, managing and administrating ambitious science projects aimed at keeping Japan at the forefront of international scientific trends. A decade ago, when the city of Yokohama asked Wada to be on the planning committee for a new high school, he brought the same bold, uncompromising vision. “It was precisely because of Dr Wada that the school was able to establish its educational principles and goals,” says the school’s principal, Haruo Sato.

“The future of science education in Japan will depend greatly on the success of the school.”

There are wrinkles to be ironed out. The school will be open to accusations of elitism and, with a price tag of ¥9.5 billion (US$100 million) — not including the land, which was donated by the city — some people ask whether the model really has a chance of spreading.

Wada answers yes to the question before it is even finished. But he acknowledges that the Yokohama experiment has much to prove. “The future of science education in Japan will depend greatly on the success of the YSFH,” he says, “and I am aware of that massive responsibility.”

Ancient roots

Wada is softly-spoken. On a tour of the five-floor, 25,000-square-metre buildings that overlook the Sumida River, he trails behind letting an administrator, Yukimasa Uekusa, lead. Wada seems proudest of the finer details, such as the two famous trees outside — a descendant of the apple tree in Isaac Newton’s garden and an offshoot of the grape vine used in some of Gregor Mendel’s experiments — and the larger-than-life images of famous scientists that cover many of the walls. “The captions are all in English,” he says. “They need to learn English.” Besides spending 2–3 days a week at the school, Wada also runs the ‘Wada Salon’ where he discusses, over tea and scones, recent scientific articles and ethical issues.

Visiting scientists might be more interested in the instruments, such as the 30-centimetre automated telescope with a retractable dome. For this and other expensive equipment, the school is devising a system by which students who have shown themselves to be capable of handling a machine will receive a licence to do so without supervision.

Few schools in the world can match this level of instrumentation. Jim Jarvis, division manager for science and technology at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia, says that his school, like the YSFH, has a telescope, a scanning electron microscope and PCR machines. But his wish list would include some things that Yokohama has but he does not, such as multiple fume cupboards and gene sequencers.

Judy Scheppler, who directs the Grainger Center for Imagination and Inquiry at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA) in Aurora, says the nanofabrication and nano-observation facilities at Yokohama are what sets it apart. “Different schools around the country and the world may have some of this. But one school having everything is extraordinary,” she says.

Sophisticated instruments don’t mean much without sophisticated instructors, and the YSFH is providing those too. Before taking up his teaching post, for example, Yutaka Mizogami spent a year training in a Tokyo University laboratory. There he got his name — and his affiliation with the YSFH — in the scientific literature as a co-author¹. He says he decided to come to the YSFH because he was tired of only being able to give 10% of his time to experiments at his previous school. He is happier now with 30%.

In its first year, the school had more than 5 applicants for every one of its 240 spots for 15–18-year-old students — compared to 3 applicants for a place at the next most popular school in the Kanagawa prefecture. The main reason to come, according to a survey, was the chance to do experiments. In person, some students told Nature it was because the teachers are fun. One said he wants to make artificial muscle. Another expressed an interest in methane hydrates.

When talking to students like this, it is hard to believe that there is much to rika banare. But politicians have been worrying about science education since 2004, when Japanese 15 year olds dropped from first to sixth in standardized mathematics tests taken the previous year and other science scores started falling. Japan had always prided itself that on such tests it was at or very near the top. By 2006, the last year for which these figures are available, the country ranked tenth in maths and sixth in science.

The counter-attack

Rika banare has inspired the government to designate more than 100 ‘super science high schools’ that receive ¥50 million per year for three years to enhance science education. Wada describes this as a “broad but shallow” first step. Noting the decline in standardized test scores, Wada boasts: “The students at the YSFH will be at the vanguard of a 180° reversal of this trend.”

Wada has long been persuading policy-makers that high-impact science sometimes requires a concentration of resources — although he hasn’t always got his way. As a biophysicist in the 1970s, Wada ran into many sceptical biologists when he was one of the first to envision large-scale automated genomic sequencing. But even as these technologies were ramping up elsewhere, Japan’s bureaucrats stalled, its genomics fell behind, and when the human genome sequence was finished, Japan accounted for only 6% compared to the 59% and 31% that the United States and United Kingdom produced respectively. The unfolding of Wada’s failed efforts are described in a book aptly titled A Defeat in the Genome Project².

Later, Wada had better luck in turning his vision into reality. He was a key player in creating and maintaining the international Human Frontier Science Program, initiated in Japan in 1989, that has funded 3,000 scientists involved in collaborative projects, including 13 who went on to win Nobel prizes³. In 1998, Wada became the founding director of the RIKEN Genomic Sciences Center (GSC) in Yokahama, Japan’s first large-scale effort at comprehensive genomics. The generously funded centre led Japan’s human- and primate-sequencing efforts and rose to international acclaim with its project to catalogue the active, ‘transcribed’ parts of the mouse genome. “He is a straight-talker, sometimes harsh, but never goes wobbly in his vision and decision,” says Yoshihide Hayashizaki, who led the RIKEN mouse project. “I guess that this is why he motivates others to follow him.”

Will others follow Wada and his vision for the Yokohama high school? The biggest sticking point in negotiations was the initial cost, which was paid by Yokohama city. Even so, Wada says there have already been half a dozen other regional governments calling to enquire about the school. Scheppler says that select high schools tend to come under pressure because only a few students benefit from their extraordinary facilities. “Shouldn’t every student get an excellent science education?” she asks. Wada is sensitive on this point. “Children with outstanding ability, even those from poor households, will be able to take advantage of the low-cost tuition and receive a great education,” he says. As it is a public school, students must pay only ¥9,000 a month.

Nobel laureate chemist Ryoji Noyori, president of RIKEN in Wako, says that the school will help to undo the “totally egalitarian public education system in our country”. Japan has been chipping away at this way of thinking, and university funding is increasingly focused on competitive funding and centres of excellence. But there is no guarantee that the privileged science track that Yokohama students start on will continue after they graduate. “I fear some students will be disappointed when they later enter the national universities,” says Noyori.

Wada is intent on exposing the students to the more luxurious end of Japanese research. The school sits next door to the RIKEN GSC and has collaborative agreements whereby they can use some of the centre’s facilities.

Like Wada’s other big ventures, this one will eventually be judged on its results: whether the originality being cultured there and at its potential spin-offs translate into improved standardized test scores and a new generation of inspired scientists. Jarvis says that two-thirds of the Jefferson school’s 450 annual graduates work in science-related fields. If nanofabrication and PCR can incite a similar passion for science in Yokohama’s teenagers, Japan’s great experiment in science high schools will have paid off.

David Cyranoski is Nature‘s Asia-Pacific correspondent.

A holiday doesn't stop the world turning

Extinction of men, women making money from their eggs to drought-friendly beer; a lot can happen in a week away from the office. Here is a digest of stories that caught my eye.

Men doomed

University of Newcastle has successfully created a primitive form of human sperm from stem cells. At the moment you can eliminate any thoughts that this will be used to treat infertility in men, but who knows what our ethics may be in 20 or 50 years time. OK, I am drawing at long bow with this extrapolation, but should we go down this path, does this mean it won’t matter if the male Y chromosome disappears altogether, as predicted by some? See this link

Frost leads to flood – apparently

The introduction of a GM wheat variety with frost tolerance could potentially flood the world wheat market and drastically lower its price and profitability, according to Network of Concerned Farmers spokesperson Julie Newman. See Farm Weekly Online article

I wonder what would happen if we developed a conventionally-bred frost tolerant wheat? Would that have the same potential effect and would there be the same outcry?

Drought-friendly beer

This is a challenge for our water-deficient, beer-swilling nation, but one being tackled by scientists from the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG). They plan to develop barley that uses about half the amount of water to malt. With backing from the nation’s biggest maltster, ABB Grain, and the Australian Research Council, they have already found genes that will help in the screening of barley for the right characteristics. Annually, Australia’s malting industry produce 790,000 tonnes of malt that produces about 7.9 billion litres of beer. Unfortunately, it also wastes enough water to fill 3160 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Dr Doug Stewart hopes these new barley varieties will cut the water use in the malting process by 40 per cent. Who can argue when it comes to beer.

Help with salinity

Researchers at the University of Adelaide have developed salt-tolerant plants that contain salt in parts of the plant where it does less damage.

These are GM crops, so will still have to run the gauntlet of public discontent, but if the workshops I run with various students and community groups are any indication, GM crops such as these (others might include drought tolerance) will have reasonably high public acceptance. Not because people don’t have concerns about these crops, because some do, but because they find any potential or perceived risks with such crops acceptable, at the moment.

Bring out yer eggs

At the annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, Alison Murdoch of the International Centre for Life in the UK, describes a successful “egg sharing” scheme in which women can obtain IVF at a discounted rate, in exchange for donating some of their eggs for research. See New Scientist article.

Loane Skene, Deputy Chairwoman of the Lockhart Committee on Human Cloning and Embryo Research, which reviewed Australia’s embryo research and anti-cloning legislation in 2005, argues that women should be paid to donate eggs for medical research.

There are many issues here. There is a big difference between getting cash for any spare or unwanted embryos left over from your IVF procedure to getting paid specifically to undergo what is often an uncomfortable and potentially dangerous procedure to harvest eggs.

More stem cell tourism

And finally, the Weekend Australian published a piece on stem cell tourism: a story in the main news section and a feature in the Weekend Magazine. It covers some of what I mentioned in the last GNTIS blog post.

Jason Major

GNTIS